May 1st: Day of the Worker

Since the 1880’s, May 1st is celebrated as International Workers Day, a worldwide event representing the solidarity of working class men and women. It was the 1886 Haymarket Square Riots in Chicago that inspired this day. Workers in the 19th century were exploited, working fourteen hour days, seven days a week in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, by the capital class who profited enormously from the railroad, steel, mining and chemical boom of that era.

The struggle for better working conditions and fair practices went on for fifty-two years. It wasn’t until June 25, 1938 that American workers were guaranteed an eight hour day and certain labor assurances. These demands could have been met without government intervention if the capitalist class valued their workers over huge profits.

It was the 16th century Scottish Economist, Adam Smith, who wrote in The Wealth of Nations “The wages of labor and the working conditions of labor will be as low as society’s sense of decency will tolerate.” It’s up to society, through government agencies, organized labor, boycotts, moral persuasion, or a combination of all of the above, who will determine working conditions and compensation.

Even though it’s the 21st century, we’re seeing many of the past practices of the capitalist class resurface; like old wine in new skins. Part of it is the “flat world” that Thomas Friedman talked about. Globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces have altered the world, making all nations economically interdependent.

It began in the Eighties to increase company profits by cheap labor and eliminating basic safety by outsourcing to other countries; where the cost of labor was dirt-cheap and legal restrictions were non-existent. The first to disappear was the steel industry, followed by the automobile industry and then manufacturing. Americans tried to be optimistic because of the new service and knowledge economy. Those jobs required brains; the foreign workers were welcome to jobs that required brawn.

With the technology boom of the Nineties, jobs in software development and programming proliferated in Northern California, but just as with the steel, automobile, and manufacturing industries, corporate greed took over. The hardware jobs went overseas and shortly after, customer service.

Even that wasn’t enough for the corporate barons. They brought labor from other countries, using the HB1 Visa to import technology engineers who would work for lower wages than their American counterparts. They used other HB2 visas for jobs they claimed Americans wouldn’t do (they might do them if they paid better). HB2 guest workers have become a new form of slave labor for business. Read some of the stories of HB2 workers here: http://tinyurl.com/d2gkb4tThe problem will worsen in the future with the changes proposed for the guest worker programs.

At the same time, the President is proposing to give a 20 percent income tax credit to businesses that move operations back to the United States, bringing jobs back home. The downside? Corporations are moving the cheap foreign workers with them, in the form of the HB2 guest workers.

Corporations are more than happy to embrace a world market. It’s a much larger employee base, more bodies who will work for slave-like wages and all the while, the corporate world isn’t required to adhere to basic human standards, nor to offer basic benefits, unlike Americans who expect nothing less.

It won’t be the operation of market forces (i.e. capitalist free-for-all) that will push the pendulum to the other side. Throughout the 20th century we’ve learned most corporations and business won’t seize the moral high ground by their own volition. They will take shortcuts on worker safety and worker compensation to increase corporate profit every time. We have plenty of examples in very recent history; think back to the BP disaster in the Gulf and even more recently, the disaster in West and in Bangladesh.

For American workers, it won’t be long until workplace safety will go the way of the living wage, retirement and healthcare. The workers of other countries exploited by the compete-globally-excuse are getting smarter. They, too, are demanding more. The Chinese workers are starting to demand better wages and shorter days. At the time of the Dhaka factory collapse, even the poor Bangladesh workers were organizing to improve conditions in the garment factories. Today, those same workers burned down factories in protest and they were met by the lathis and bullets of the police.

It’s the Haymarket Riots all over again, in another geographical location.

As the realization of labor injustice takes hold in one country after another, will Corporate America move their operations from one poverty-stricken country to an even more poverty-stricken country? Will they ever exhaust their supply of cheap labor? Will they ever run out of workers who will tolerate subsistence wages and unsafe environments?

Will our great-great grandchildren be clamoring for those sixteen-cent-a-day garment jobs?

Carol Morgan is a career counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Follow her on Twitter @CounselorCarol1, on Facebook: CarolMorgan1 and her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

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We are certainly aware of how labor has been treated by the people who are willing to sale this country out to others.

Due to technological advances people that once worked in promising careers requiring college degrees see work outsourced to foreign countries. Occupations ranging from computer programmers to radiologists are working across the globe displacing American workers.

Furthermore, the actuarial assessment of the age when an employee becomes a liability instead of an asset for health insurance plans is 42. If someone becomes unemployed after the age of 45 the odds start working against those individuals finding new employment, particularly with an equivalent salary and similar benefits.

Instead of granting corporate subsidies and lower tax rates there should be more willingness for corporate entities to recognize the privilege that they can transact business in this country and pay higher effective tax rates. These corporations benefit from government structures ranging from civil courts for contract enforcement to public education providing a skilled workforce. To provide legal avenues to corporations to evade taxes is detrimental to society and common decency.

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

So you were so bored on your own blog that you decided to act like a real Teabegger and come over to litter on Carol's blog instead? Don't feel like you are worthy unless you behave aggressively?

It's funny that you mention Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Canada in your list of places with low taxation. I don't recall any of those countries appointing themselves as "world cop" with a bloated military like the US. Obviously your addled memory failed to awaken to realize why that would lead to a lower taxation rate.

In addition, those four places you idealized have socialized healthcare systems! Apparently there are some competitive edges for corporations that have a workforce that is in better health while also not having to shoulder the burden of paying for the healthcare of those workers. Doesn't that make the US employer-based healthcare system look kind of stupid? And I always thought you valued freedom with extremely limited government, like Somalia, so for you to hold those places in such high regard is astonishing. I can feel the socialism oozing inside your capillaries as I type. LOL!

So I thank DissMay for pointing out those locations to compare with the employer-based health insurance system in the US. The US health care system brings poorer results at higher costs than the places with socialized medicine.

BTW, keep quoting Adolph Hitler. I know that you are obsessed with him for some reason even thought I expect a lame excuse from you as to why you continue to quote him. Teabegger mentality, you know.

For years I was a firm believer in globalization. I even worked for a business graduate school well noted for its fame in international business education.

And what did I learn from all that experience?

I learned that the people who promoted that school were as greedy as the future CEOs they trained. And all their graduates went home to their countries to put into practice on a global basis what I call Greed Inc.

Carol, you hit the nail on the head. The labor class of the entire world has been pitted against itself with global outsourcing. There is no way the worker in the United States can compete with economies such as Bangladesh, etc.

And the obscenely wealthy, the owners of these corporations, know exactly what they are doing. They have known it from the very start. Where we are today did not just happen. It was planned every step of the way.

Government programs such as NAFTA were no accident. American car manufacturing moved its factories across the border into Mexico.
And so it went. WENT is the operative word here.

Obama wants to give corporate welfare to companies who bring their manufacturing back to the United States. I disagree with corporate welfare in any form.

If they don't bring manufacturing back, then maybe import tariffs on their products would be the way to go. Buy American. Buy Made in the USA.

If these big companies cannot put this label on their products, then tax them out the wazoo. A dose of protectionism might be the 2 x 4 in the kisser that they need.

If these corporations do not want to produce in this country, but want to keep their corporate status, then they must manufacture here and not over there.

If these large corporations want the world to be their playground, then we can at least take away their sand box. Take away their corporate status in this country. Let them deal with the laws of other countries. Put them in foreclosure here and sell their corporate status right out from under them. Get my drift?

In response to your lack of clarity, let me say that perhaps you made a Freudian slip?

Yes, "socialists" would want their money, especially from corporate masters who take, take, take, to the point where CEOs have salaries a 1000 times above what an average worker makes. There is NO justification for this disparity, nor for corporations avoiding tax payments by hiding $ in offshore accounts.

So yes, we want our $ to go to supporting the United States, its workers, its families. We don't want global corporations robbing the US and us! If that makes us socialists, then so be it.

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Jonathan Swift "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx

for about 27 years now, though mostly for the professional liability insurance. Education unions around here don't have much, if any power, and the quality of Texas eduction demonstrates the impacts of that fact.

I read an article discussing the growing global wealth disparity between the top 100 (top .0000000167%), and the rest of Earth's human population. I think I saw it on Fb, but I can't say for sure, and haven't looked for it very hard. However, it may have been referring to this link, or the 2012 report. They both came up at the top of the list on google. Interesting information.

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Jonathan Swift "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx

It shows one difference between May and Carol, unless I missed Carol's posts on May's glob. And, if Carol has sullied herself, as I sullied myself, I doubt that the percentage of her posts compared to total posts, is a fraction like the top 100 wealthiest humans.

Also, it demonstrates that the boycott/slow down is having major impacts on May's narcissism, and probable importance to LOL.

Without our support (even negative attention is positive to a child or a narcissist, if they aren't getting the attention they want by acting good), May's stuck with his Mayettes, and I imagine that they don't dote on him enough to fill his ego's needs. Thus, he comes here to misbehave, and try to get more attention.

I wonder what May's hit rates would be with only his regular believers visiting him.

With luck, we'll be seeing even more of him, as his desperation increases.

20 years later, we're in a situation where people struggle to find jobs while tech companies struggle to find workers. The nature of capitalism is to be in perpetual revolution, the very definition of liberalism in the classic sense. Constant change to the foundations of an economy and a culture undermines stable families and communities, the things that "conservatives" claim to value most.

Modern conservatism is one giant contradiction. They support the very things that are undermining their way of life and their beliefs. It's no wonder they resort to conspiracy theories and superstition. The world is changing faster than they can digest, and they have no framework to understand it. The irrational opposition to unions is just one symptom of the underlying disorder.

Today is May 1 and real unemployment is probably closer to 15-16% if this administration didn't fudge the numbers.Unemployment for black Americans is much higher than that and if you're a teenager forget it.

Thanks to the liberal progressive Democrats in this very stupid Obama administration , many people wish they still had a job that gave them an 8 hour workday.Or any amount of hours in a workday.

But with the regulations and costs of Obamacare and other very stupid progressive policies, employers will be cutting hours and laying off employees.

I made the mistake of reading that one. Will try not to do that again soon.

Your rants don't even come close to the reality of the actual problems. Instead you construct endless, one-dimensional straw men. You might as well be blaming microwave transmissions from aliens who are trying to influence your thoughts.

I would like to think you really came over for a group hug. You don't have to be the skunk at the party. Just try a little harder next time.

The constitution does guarantee the right to vote. The constitution does not guarantee membership in a union or the right to vote in a union. Do you not understand the difference?

Unemployment figures under this administration are calculated the same way as they are under previous administrations. They are calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The same argument about real unemployment can be made for all previous administrations, Republican and Democrat.

It was your hero, G.W. Bush that put us here. Unemployment would be much worse if Obama had implemented the same debunked policies that got us here. http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=1054307&f=28&sub=Contributor You teabeggers need to get out of the way because it is clear you are not here to be constructive, but rather to bring the house down.

To your point about cutting back on hours due to the ACA, the only people who push that non-sense are overwhelmingly Republican propagandists and obstructionists.

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Jonathan Swift "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Groucho Marx